We finally got some hands on time with a laptop running a near-final version of the operating system.

Our first impressions bear out what we've seen in demos: the new "Metro" interface (see right) bears no resemblance at all to traditional Windows.

That's fine -- it was designed for tablets, where Windows has never been a good fit.

But unlike the iPad (and iPhone), which were immediately intuitive, Metro is not. A lot of the apps themselves are excellent, but as soon as you get out of the apps and into the "chrome" -- the interface of the actual operating system -- it gets weird.

There are tons of tricks to learn. It's often unclear exactly what you're looking at, and what you're supposed to do with it.

Worst of all, the traditional desktop is buried -- it's just another Metro app -- but there are still some things you can only do from the desktop, and some only from Metro. That means you have to switch between the two interfaces frequently. That's not nearly as smooth as it should be.

It may be possible to build an operating system that works great both on traditional PCs and on touch-screen tablets. But based on my initial impressions, using a final-beta build of Windows 8 on pre-release hardware, this isn't it.

Microsoft will undoubtedly change and improve the operating system over time, and the final release on real hardware may fix some of these problems. But for now, it looks like Apple's Tim Cook is right: this is a toaster grafted on to a refrigerator. Unless some customers actually want two-in-one devices that can work as both a traditional PC and a tablet, it's going to be a very hard sell.

Examples Of What's Frustrating About Windows 8

Yesterday, Microsoft gave me a loaner laptop (not tablet) with the latest build of Windows 8 on it. It's also got a special trackpad that uses the same touch mechanisms as a Windows 8 touch screen device would -- if you want to zoom out, for instance, you just take two fingers and swipe them outward.

I've seen lots of demos of Windows 8, but this is the first time I've gotten any extensive time alone with it. I tried to use it as my main computer last night.

A lot of things about it drove me nuts. Here are some examples:

Moving between apps is harder than it should be. In Windows 8, you can swipe the screen from the left side to see the last thing you were doing -- it works like the back button in a Web browser. That should be good, right? But in practice, it doesn't really work. It's not obvious how many apps you have open, and which apps you've closed. (You have to hover over the lower-left hand corner of the screen to see which apps are open at a given moment.) As a result, swipes take you between some seemingly random assortment of things you've been doing recently. The only reliable way I could find to switch between apps is to go back to the Start screen and open the app I wanted.

What am I looking at? Sometimes, bizarre things seem to happen for no reason. A couple times while using an app, I did something near the top of the screen, and suddenly the app shrunk down to a tiny window that I could drag on a blank purple background. What was this? I never found out, because as soon as I tried to drag it the app went back full screen. Sometimes, a little hand appears when you drag the pointer near the the top of the screen, but it wasn't clear why -- until I figured out that it meant "swipe down from the top to see a new menu with choices." No doubt I would eventually figure all this stuff out. But an iPad user would rightly ask: why should I have to?

On a laptop, there are lots of new "physical" commands, and it's not clear which to use. In Metro, some functions, like opening an app or checking a checkbox, require just a tap. They actually won't work if you press down and click (like you would with a mouse). Others, like grabbing a slider to scroll, require you to click and hold with one finger, then move a second finger. Others require you to tap in a particular part of the screen, or swipe your finger from off the edge of the trackpad onto the trackpad. When you switch to the classic desktop, the functions change -- it's more like a traditional mouse, where you can click or tap. These problems may have been a result of using a laptop with trackpad, rather than a tablet -- but a lot of people are going to be using it this way, so the experience matters.

The differences between Metro and the classic desktop seem jarring and random. The classic desktop is presented as just another Metro app -- open it, and you're in familiar Windows 7 land, with a few useful updates. That's fine. But some functions of Metro still work: for instance, if you swipe from the right, you still get the "charms" that let you search the entire OS, share content, go to the Start menu, and so on. Others do not: if you do a hard click near the bottom, nothing. (In Metro, doing this takes you to useful functions like seeing all available apps, or pinning apps to the start menu.)

The classic desktop is not well integrated with Metro. I wanted to pin MS Paint (which I use to take screenshots) to the Start menu, so I could easily get to it again and again. But even though Paint is a desktop-only app, I couldn't do it from the classic desktop -- I had to go back to the Metro Start screen, figure out how to open all apps (you hover over a spot near the bottom of the screen -- not easy!), then control-click (again, not easy!) and select "pin" from the bottom of the screen.

Desktop apps are hard to find. One of the most common complaints from reviewers of early Windows 8 builds is that Microsoft removed the Start button from the classic desktop. This is indeed a pain. There's no easy way to find which apps are available to run on the desktop. The only way I could figure it out was to go back to the Metro start screen, then swipe up from the bottom of the screen to get the All Apps menu.

Microsoft's Windows team and reviewers who have been living with preview versions of Windows 8 for months will probably have easy answers to all of these questions, or will say that I would eventually be able to figure all this stuff out after living with Windows 8 for a week. Also, some of the bugs and unfinished features may be because this is still a beta version, not shipping product.

But still.

I've been using Windows since 1995. I've been using Macs, on and off, since 1992. I didn't need hands-on guidance or a week's worth of practice the first time I used an iPhone, iPad, Android tablet, or even a Windows Phone.

Imagine the initial reaction of non-technical Windows users who hate thinking about this stuff and just want to get some work done.